Shellshock

by Anthony Masters

  Anthony Masters

  SHELLSHOCK

  Contents

  Part One Walking Shadows Autumn 1988 – Spring 1989

  Part Two The Adventure Summer 1989

  Part Three The Garland

  Part Four Man of Shells

  Part Five The Rock People

  Part Six Going Back

  Epilogue Mirror

  A Note on the Author

  PART ONE

  Walking Shadows

  Autumn 1988 – Spring 1989

  ‘It’s time this family had an adventure,’ said his father over breakfast. David looked at him warily. Life had been eventful enough, what with Gran going into the home and his parents quarrelling so much that one of the guests had complained. ‘We’ve got the offer of the Spanish house. We should take it for the year.’

  David knew that he was only making this often-repeated statement to upset Mum. His father had been going on about the Spanish house for over six months now, ever since he knew that Gran would have to go into the home. What Tod hadn’t realised and what had come as such a terrible shock, was that Mum still wouldn’t leave her, even when she was in St Swithin’s. David could have told him that any time, but instead he had sat back and waited for the explosion. When it came, it was much bigger, much more damaging than even he had imagined.

  Never had he heard them quarrel so much and so badly. They were at it day and night, his mother stubborn and patient; his father shouting and inconsolable. He was a tall, passionate man with an untidy ginger beard whose personality was as big as his frame. If only they’d talked about it before, long before, David thought. Why hadn’t they stopped living in a dream? Surely they should have both realised it would always be stalemate. And Gran? Well, she had been in a state of martyrdom for years and hardly realised what was going on outside her own world. As for David he was torn between his love for all three of them. But it was his father who dominated them all. Tod with his charm and his laughter when the work was going well or other people were around; Tod with his dark moods of gloom and despondency, his long silences, his sudden flashes of temper.

  His mother stood up and began to clear the dishes.

  ‘Don’t go on about it now, David will be late for school.’

  It was a cold, dull, rain-driven November morning, dark with scudding clouds and crawling traffic. The Adams lived in a tall town house in Canterbury near the cathedral where his father, a sculptor, was employed as a mason.

  ‘Let’s all be late,’ said Dad. He was desperately frustrated by his routine job, and the lack of time he had for the sculpture that ruled his life. This was a Monday morning. On Mondays his father always felt worse, and showed it, but only to the family. If the telephone went – or a guest appeared, he would switch on the charm. But neither David nor his family really resented this. They had simply got used to it.

  David scrambled to his feet. He must leave before the arguing began again and the guests started complaining. What had started as bickering had become full-scale warfare and he couldn’t stand it any more.

  ‘I’m not complaining.’

  David sat opposite his gran in the St Swithin’s lounge. She was a diminutive figure in a huge armchair. Her shoulders were hunched, her head had sunk to her chest and a ball of untidy knitting lay on her lap. But that was where the cosy image ended. Mrs Carpenter had run her own cleaning agency in South London for years, and although she had been living with David’s parents for a long time, she was still fiercely individual and had a tough mind that was, sadly, beginning to break up.

  ‘Of course they’re all geriatric here – half barmy. Completely barmy.’ She spoke in a very loud voice and looked around her challengingly. Luckily the residents in the lounge that had once been a ballroom were mainly too deaf to hear her. One of the care staff heard though, and looked at David with raised eyebrows and a smile. Gran had only been in here a week and already she was notorious.

  Mrs Carpenter was still a handsome woman, despite her wizened frame. Her face was gaunt and her eyes looked like dried blackcurrants but her bone structure gave her face real distinction.

  ‘If it wasn’t for my waterworks I wouldn’t be in here,’ she pronounced to the room at large and then winked at David. They had a special friendship. She knew everything about him and at fourteen he still confided all his secrets to her, whether they were to do with girlfriends or school or music or his ambitions. He wanted to be an archaeologist, but hadn’t really discussed it with his parents. Only Gran.

  ‘Well?’ she said, reaching for the cup of brackish-looking tea, her own brew that she insisted the nurses master. ‘What are they doing back at Dunroamin?’

  Five years ago, unable to make ends meet, her parents had moved from an outlying Kentish village to buy the house in Canterbury and turn it into a guest house. They had inherited the name and had kept it on for a joke.

  ‘Arguing.’

  ‘That’s all they ever do,’ she snapped. ‘Argue, argue. It’s not right.’

  ‘They used to be OK.’

  When they lived in the old tumbledown cottage, Dad had happily travelled into Canterbury, Mum had worked on her own sculpture when she wasn’t in the garden and he had gone to the village school. They had been such happy days.

  ‘That’s before I lost my independence.’

  It was actually a long time before she lost her independence, but Gran had become a bit confused about time recently.

  David shrugged. ‘You being here hasn’t made any difference.’

  ‘Don’t know about that.’

  ‘Well, I do.’ He’d tried to sound as positive as he could but she wasn’t having any. ‘If it wasn’t for me you’d have that year in Spain.’

  ‘We can’t afford it.’

  ‘Rubbish. It would do you all good. I’ve told Mary – leave me here. I’ll be dead soon.’

  ‘No one’s leaving you anywhere.’

  ‘I’ve got cancer; it won’t be long.’ She sipped miserably at her tea, like an old hooded owl. David knew that she didn’t have cancer; she had a heart condition and was becoming so incontinent that his mother could no longer physically look after her.

  ‘She could live at least another ten years,’ the doctor had said recently. ‘She’s only seventy-two.’

  ‘You’ll live to a hundred.’

  ‘Not if your dad has anything to do with it.’

  ‘Gran –’

  Suddenly she stopped being a querulous, self-absorbed old lady and became perceptive and shrewd. This was what David loved so much about her. It was as if the wrinkles and the bent body and the cantankerousness were only a mask and underneath still lay the real person.

  ‘David, I’ve begged your mother to go with him. It’s the break they both need. And your education would benefit so much from a year abroad.’

  ‘I’d miss my mates.’

  ‘Now who’s being selfish?’

  ‘But –’

  ‘He can’t take much more, your dad. Fifteen years a mason and hardly ever a holiday. Weekends and evenings sweating in that studio – he’s obsessed with it all. And you know what he’s like – putting on an act for outsiders, getting dried up into himself at home.’

  ‘He’s had exhibitions.’

  ‘Never enough time for his real work. He’ll break out, you know. Before it breaks him. He’s been good since you were a kid.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Your dad’s got a driving force in him. Watch out.’

  But David knew that. It frightened him somehow, knowing something like that was buried in his father. He specialised in huge abstract sculptures. Sometimes they looked like sitting giants; other times piles of rock. He didn’t make any money out of them, but a lot of people thought highly of him. Critics mainly. The gener
al public didn’t understand them. Neither did David, except that they were somehow part of his father – the immovable part maybe. Like his rock-solid belief in his own ability.

  ‘If he could just go to Spain …’

  ‘Mum doesn’t want to go.’

  ‘She would if it wasn’t for me.’

  The conversation was becoming circular.

  ‘He’s a walking shadow.’ She took another long draught of tea and looked round the room malevolently. How she hates it here, thought David. Then he became aware that she was looking at him very seriously. ‘I want you to talk to your mother. Persuade her to go before it’s too late.’

  ‘She won’t leave you. She doesn’t want to leave you. Neither do I. Dad will get over all this.’ But in the back of his mind David knew he was wrong. His father’s patience was wearing thinner and thinner.

  ‘I don’t think he will,’ she said abruptly. ‘If he doesn’t go, he’ll hold it against you for the rest of your life. Your dad needs to go. Deserves to.’ She paused. ‘He ought to grow up too and something’s got to make him. He’s like a big sulky kid at the moment. He hasn’t got what he wants and he’ll do anything to get it.’

  Gran leant back and closed her eyes. The effort of being responsible for other people had exhausted her.

  ‘Don’t break the family up,’ she muttered. Then she opened her eyes like an angry old vulture. ‘Nurse!’ she yelled. ‘The tea’s cold.’

  The next weekend David took his bike and rode off alone to Faversham where a network of muddy creeks traversed the marshes and, further on, a huge grey estuary lapped at a muddy foreshore. He wanted to think but instead met Jan. They had been friends for a long time now, but recently there had been a cooling off. It had something to do with the fact that the more his parents quarrelled the more he wanted to be with them and so he saw less of Jan. Idly pedalling he had cycled through her village. Had he taken the route deliberately? It was hard to say; there was another one he could have taken. She had been coming out of a shop with a friend. Quickly the friend had been dismissed.

  ‘David –’ She just spoke his name, grabbing the handlebars of his bike as he pulled in, in an attempt to stop him going any further. Jan was small, with a mass of tumbling golden hair and a round open face with a snub nose. This made her look both innocent and defenceless, neither of which she was. She lived with her father on a smallholding; her mother had left them years ago. Mr Daniels was a solitary man. He worked very hard indeed here as a market gardener and refused to accept any outside help. Consequently, although he loved Jan dearly, she was also expected to work hard to run the house, cook his meals, and give him a hand in the market garden.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Down to Hollow Shore.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To have a think.’

  ‘Your mum and dad at each other again?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Is that why you haven’t been to see me?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  There was an orange rag of a November sun occasionally appearing between the clouds and it was unusually warm and moist. David suddenly felt more relaxed.

  ‘Want some company?’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘He’s gone to Margate for the day. British Legion. I could make you some soup.’

  David considered. He had wanted to be alone. But he also wanted some advice. Besides, he had missed her.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’ll get my bike.’

  He followed her slowly back to the ramshackle little cottage just outside the village. It backed on to an old overgrown pond, and the few trees around it were so windblown that they were all bent in one direction. The market garden was to one side – a jumble of sheds and greenhouses.

  Jan was quick and was soon back with her antiquated bike. As they rode along the flat, dyke-enclosed countryside, she said:

  ‘Your dad still on about Spain?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Nothing. My mum won’t leave Gran. Dad thinks she should.’

  ‘Will he go on his own?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Do you want to go?’

  ‘Not much. I wouldn’t see you.’

  ‘You haven’t been seeing much of me anyway.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘It’s just been bad,’ said David woodenly.

  They cycled on in silence. Then she said:

  ‘I got some news.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My dad’s won some money.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Three grand.’

  ‘Blimey! What’s he going to do with it?’

  ‘Take us away for a holiday.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ She looked across at him as they turned into a narrow concrete road that ran between the cabbage fields.

  ‘Makes a change to hear some good news,’ said David.

  They rode on down the narrow concrete road until they came to a little church and a stall full of produce. David could never understand why they put it out for there was no passing trade. But there it was: fruit and lettuces and tomatoes.

  ‘I’ll buy some of those.’ She had a basket on the front of her bike. ‘Those little tomatoes are so delicious. I’ll make them into sandwiches for you when we get back.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  They stopped and waited by the stall and then knocked at the door of a cottage near the church. An old lady came out and sold them the tomatoes and then they cycled on to the beach. Once they got there, they found the tide was out and the skies had cleared completely. The sun was warm, casting a golden light over the mud, turning it from grey to a winking green. For a while they sat on the tussocky grass, looking out at the boats in the estuary.

  Suddenly David began to cry.

  At first she didn’t know what to do. To Jan, David had always seemed so self-contained. He was tall like his father, with red hair and freckles and a quiet confidence that she knew she lacked. He was casually good at things – work, sport, friendship – in a way that sometimes seemed too easy, as if he was only prepared to give a part of himself to the outside world. She had always known that his family were ‘arty’, that his father had tremendous personality but was of uneven temperament, and she feared them for all their secret, undiscussable talents, often wondering what David saw in her. But now, she realised, something dreadful was happening to him. David’s entire home base was cracking up and he was becoming a different person. She put an arm round his shoulders. Should she kiss him? They had often kissed but too casually, without much conviction.

  Slowly his crying stopped and it was too late to kiss him.

  ‘Is it that bad?’ she asked inadequately.

  He nodded. ‘We can’t leave Gran,’ he said. ‘But Dad will just take off.’

  She knew she had grown closer to him, that he wanted to confide in her. But what should she do now? They were walking on the beach, hand in hand, saying nothing. Was it a comfortable silence, Jan wondered, or was she meant to be saying something? Bringing him comfort?

  ‘David, have you talked to your dad alone?’ she said with an effort.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You should.’

  ‘I can’t persuade him. He’s too self absorbed. Always has been.’

  ‘You could try to understand his point of view.’

  ‘I don’t want to lose him. If he goes, he’ll go forever. We’ve been so happy. Why can’t we go on like that?’

  ‘Maybe he feels he’s got to have a change.’

  ‘Dad wants an adventure. That’s what he said and Gran agrees.’

  ‘You love your gran a lot, don’t you?’

  ‘I love her to death.’

  ‘Talk to him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  But she didn’t know i
f he was just trying to shut her up. They walked on in silence. Then he said:

  ‘I know it seems selfish, but I think he wants time for his sculpture. The work on the cathedral’s been getting him down. He’s so tired when he comes home he can’t get on with his own work. His real work.’

  ‘I’m frightened of his sculpture.’

  ‘Frightened?’

  ‘I don’t understand it. All those piles of stones. And they look kind of angry.’

  ‘They’re abstract.’

  ‘They’re angry.’

  David stopped and knelt down. They had reached a part of the foreshore that was covered in big pebbles. He began to pile them up, one on top of the other.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘People say anyone can make Dad’s sculptures. Maybe I can.’

  ‘Don’t you believe in him?’

  David looked away. ‘I don’t know.’ There was an awkward silence then he blurted out, ‘Perhaps he wants to get away from us. Maybe he’s bored with us. He’s always OK with outsiders; he never shows them his moods. They all think he’s fantastic.’

  ‘Talk to him.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Why does he make piles of stones?’

  ‘They’re something to do with a Spanish legend. That’s why he wants to go.’ He dug in his anorak pocket and fished out a crumpled newspaper cutting. It read:

  CANTERBURY ARTIST EXHIBITS PILES OF STONES Charismatic Canterbury artist Tod Adams works in a shed in the back garden of the family guest house in North Street. He has been exhibiting sculpture at the Dower Gallery in River Passage, and he calls it The Rock People – work inspired by a Spanish legend. Tod told our reporter, Glynnis Williams: ‘I hope to spend time on the Costa Brava, working on more Rock People projects. It’s a fascinating story but I can’t do it justice without being there.’

  ‘At least I know what he’s on about now,’ said Jan.

  ‘I’m not always sure that I do,’ replied David. He got up. ‘I’m starving. What about that food?’ They held hands again going back.

  ‘He loves you,’ she said. ‘Talk to him.’

  ‘I want to talk to you, Dad.’

  ‘Sure.’

  He was in the shed, whitewashing stones. He looked tired, bone-weary in fact.